Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a communication system, a communication apparatus, a method of controlling the same, and a storage medium.
Description of the Related Art
In recent years, image forming apparatuses having wireless communication functions supporting various wireless communication standards such as NFC (Near Field Communication), wireless LAN, Bluetooth®, or the like, have appeared. Techniques for easily causing such an image forming apparatus to execute a print (image formation) from a communication terminal such as a smart phone that supports NFC have been proposed. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2013-184296 discloses an image forming apparatus that exchanges information with a communication terminal in order to establish communication according to a higher speed communication scheme such as wireless LAN by establishing NFC communication with the communication terminal when it is detected that the communication terminal is positioned within range for the NFC communication. The image forming apparatus establishes communication according to the high speed communication scheme with the communication terminal using information that was exchanged, and receives print data from the communication terminal by the established communication to perform printing. The technique for thus performing a pairing between apparatuses by NFC communication and handing over the actual communication to Bluetooth® or wireless LAN communication is called “a handover”.
One method of realizing the handover described above is a method of the image forming apparatus providing connection information, for connecting to an access point to which the image forming apparatus is connected by a high speed communication scheme such as wireless LAN, to a communication terminal by an NFC communication. In this method, the communication terminal establishes a wireless connection with the access point using the connection information received by the NFC communication, and establishes communication with the image forming apparatus via the access point.
In connection information that is exchangeable in such NFC communication, an SSID (Service Set Identifier) that indicates unique identification information for identifying an access point on a wireless network may be included. Also, in this kind of connection information, information such as an authentication method, an encryption method, an encryption key, or the like, that are used by the access point may be included. This kind of connection information is stored in advance as NDEF (NFC Data Exchange Format) data in an NFC module of the image forming apparatus. With this, the NFC module of the communication terminal is able to execute a handover based on NDEF data that is read by reading NDEF data from the NFC module of the image forming apparatus by an NFC communication.
While on one hand image forming apparatuses in which an NFC module is implemented exist in recent years, as described above, there are still many image forming apparatuses in existence in which an NFC module is not implemented. In image forming apparatuses in which such an NFC module is not implemented, an NFC tag in which connection information necessary for a handover is written may be attached to an external surface of the image forming apparatus. With this, an external communication terminal can execute the above described handover using the NFC tag attached to the external surface of the image forming apparatus.
As described above, when realizing a handover using an NFC tag, it is necessary to write connection information necessary for the handover to the NFC tag in advance. The writing of the connection information to the NFC tag can be performed using a communication terminal that has an NFC communication function (NFC module), for example. In such a case, it is necessary for a user to input the above described connection information, such as the SSID, manually using a communication terminal, and in addition to the input being cumbersome for the user, there is the possibility that an inputting mistake will occur.